Capital Letters and Basic Keyboard Symbols

Did you know that most keys on a keyboard can produce two different characters? Look at the 1 key - it shows 1 on the bottom and ! on the top. The Shift key is what unlocks the top character. Holding Shift while pressing a key gives you the upper symbol instead of the lower one.

Capital letters - Shift + letter

• Hold Shift with the opposite hand’s pinky, then press the letter key.
• Shift + a = A, Shift + b = B, and so on for every letter.
• Release Shift immediately after the capital - the next letter will be lowercase.

Symbols - Shift + number key

• Shift + 1 = ! (exclamation mark) - used for excitement or emphasis.
• Shift + 2 = @ (at sign) - used in email addresses.
• Shift + 3 = # (hash / number sign) - used for hashtags and numbering.
• Shift + 4 = $ (dollar sign) - used for money amounts.
• Shift + 5 = % (percent sign) - used for percentages.
• Shift + / = ? (question mark) - used to end a question.

Common punctuation without Shift

• . (period) - key to the right of the comma. Ends a sentence.
• , (comma) - key to the left of the period. Separates items in a list.
• - (hyphen) - key to the right of the zero. Joins words (e.g., well-known).

Handy tip - two characters per key

• When you see two characters printed on a key, the bottom one is the normal character you get by pressing that key alone.
• The top one appears when you hold Shift first.